


re: re: happy birthday lazulisong

by GoblinCity



Category: Captain America, Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, I'm so sorry, present fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-23
Updated: 2015-02-23
Packaged: 2018-03-14 18:48:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3421616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoblinCity/pseuds/GoblinCity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anecdotes from Bucky Barnes' time in residential based on Lazulisong's wonderful re: re: blonde joke series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	re: re: happy birthday lazulisong

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lazulisong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazulisong/gifts).



You find the first shift staff moderately tolerable. The First Shift Nurse Amy smells like expensive, powdery perfume that makes your nose twitch and sometimes when you look at her, it's like a transposed image, over the bright pink scrubs is a starched white uniform, the blonde plait becomes stiff victory rolls and the shiny gloss, a slash of red lips. It makes your head hurt until you look away and focus on something else. But the First Shift Nurse Amy is perfunctory in her med pass, the noisy cart stopping by your door at exactly 0905 every morning with a paper cup of pills and a plastic cup of water. 

Even though you've done this every morning for the past six months, First Shift Nurse Amy tells you what each pill is, what it is for, the dosage and the potential side effects. Sometimes you nod when she pauses after each medication. Sometimes you stare until she's done. Every time you swallow the cup of pills in one mouthful and wash them down in one swallow of water. You don't always like taking the pills, but it's better than when you got here and they crushed the pills up into a spoon of pudding. When they didn't explain. When they told you to open your mouth. 

Sometimes you refused. Sometimes you kept the bitter, mouthful on your tongue until the First Shift Nurse Amy asked you to open your mouth and you refused. You spat it into a napkin later and flushed it or threw it into the communal trashcans in the hall. Somehow they always knew. Somehow, they always told the man called Steve Rogers. 

The man called Steve Rogers never asked you directly about this, but on the days you did not swallow the pudding, his mouth would be set in a thin line and his eyes would be tight during his visit. That expression lodged in your chest like a physical ache. Eventually, they offer you whole pills in a cup and you stop spitting them out.

No, that’s not entirely true. On the bad days, days when you see Hydra agents in every face, around every corner, you would cheek the pills. Or you would cough them up after the First Shift Nurse Amy left. You were an expert at keeping the pills between your upper molars and your cheek, opening your mouth to let her look inside and see nothing. 

But you stop doing that entirely in the third month of your stay when everything changes. The man named Coulson who used to be dead but now is alive comes to the facility. It’s Tuesday and you’re slightly put out. For one, because he’s here before the man called Steve Rogers takes his daily visit and Tuesday is animal therapy day. Tuesday and Thursday are both animal therapy, but Tuesday is when George the Therapy Bloodhound does the therapy dog rounds and he is your favorite. George the Bloodhound doesn’t do tricks. He mostly just lies down and allows you to pet him. Sometimes he’ll sit up if you have a treat that the animal therapy handler lets you give him. Then he mostly drools these long strings of drool that look like shoelaces. 

The man called Coulson who used to be dead but is now alive has taken away ten precious minutes of your hour with George the Bloodhound. You’re beginning to lose patience with him. He wants to talk to you about SHIELD and the Avengers. Things that involve guns and blood and take you back to the bad shape you were in during those first few weeks of being Back in the World. The days where you were locked in a room with no windows and a mattress on the floor with a plastic blanket that is too thick to hang yourself with (the aide tells you this) and foam slippers and a hospital gown that doesn’t close all the way in the back. 

You put up with this because the man called Steve Rogers stays with you. You’re angry, then. You cannot control your reactions and it takes the Alien Demigod Thor to agree to stay and restrain you when they trigger you with the code words that Anthony ‘call me Tony’ Stark finds in the data he stole from Hydra. 

The Alien Demigod Thor is actually stronger than you, but he’s strangely gentle when he keeps you in place and sometimes you see that when he smiles, it doesn’t reach his eyes. So you nod your head at him once you’re in control and he releases you. 

That’s how you’re beginning to feel when the man called Coulson keeps talking, like the trigger word was activated and everything is spinning down to a pinpoint that involves your metal fist in his flesh face. Out of the corner of your eye you see a flash of white. 

It’s the dirty, flapping lab coat of the medical director. She’s an older woman whom you secretly think was a Soviet Olympic dead lifter with how broad her shoulders are, but her accent goes Southern when she’s angry. She’s drawling her words now when she says things that involve ‘injunction’ and ‘restraining order’ to the man called Coulson who does not seem shaken in the least. His expression only changes when you hear the steady footfalls of the man called Steve Rogers approaching. You know the man called Steve Rogers is giving the man called Coulson his disappointed face because the man called Coulson’s shoulders fall and eventually he retreats. 

The medical director turns to you and the man called Steve Rogers and begins to apologize but you interrupt because you only have half an hour left with George the Bloodhound and you won’t get to see him again until next week. The medical director apologizes by giving you an extra hour with George the Bloodhound at the end of the day. After this, you stop cheeking your medication. 

First shift is also when the nursing students appear. For six weeks you see them every Wednesday until noon. They never work with you. They work on the geriatric unit and on the strictly physical rehab hall. You only see them in the communal ‘café’, which is really just a giant cafeteria that has fancy coffee during lunch. The nursing students feed the geriatrics that are unable to feed themselves. The nursing students are encouraged by their instructor to talk to the dependent feeds as though they are engaging in conversation between bites of pureed salad and sips of thickened liquids. When you first came here, you had problems swallowing for a time, so you were on nectar thick liquids. You never want to drink thickened water again. 

One of the geriatrics is a schizophrenic woman with no teeth. She wears a flower hat and you met her when you escaped onto that unit to investigate it. That unit smells like urine and syrup at all times, and you know they clean it every day because you checked to make sure. You think the woman is more with it than she seems from the way she drools out the pureed salad onto her clothing protector- you know that’s the code for ‘bib’- until the nursing student begins to feed her the cup of fake ice cream that is really a high calorie nutritional supplement. You wink at the old woman and she gives you a gummy smile before accepting a spoon full of the stuff. She doesn’t drool it out.

Personally, you think it tastes like shit.

You also think aromatherapy is bullshit. That’s the first thing you write in the spiral bound notebook that your occupational therapist gives you. You’re supposed to write in it once a day, no matter how short or how long. It’s to practice your handwriting. Other people put rings onto pegs, you re-learn something that was trained out of the Winter Soldier because who needs a weapon that can write?

The man called Steve Rogers asks to read it during a visit when he sees you closing the cover. You offer it to him, then he seems ashamed, and tells you never mind. You shove it in his hands and call him a jerk in fond tones.

One week, the man called Steve Rogers is away on a mission. You are disappointed, but not expecting his visits today. When you return to your room from art therapy (which you write in your journal is not bullshit but still questionable), the red head called Natasha is there, her boots up on the small desk in your room. You sit down across the table from her and the two of you stare at each other for a solid ten minutes before she tells you she’s here to answer any questions you have. 

You stare at each other for another ten minutes before one question leads to another and another and soon you’re pouring out all of your words and getting back sadness and pain, phantom aches you don’t remember. Does Steve Rogers know all of this, you ask her. She shrugs and says yeah. You nod and ask her if she’s supposed to be here, telling you this. She says it’s only fair that you know. You accept that and next time she comes, you play cards instead. She has a good poker face.

The second shift staff are like the first shift staff except the STNAs- they’re not called Nurse’s Aides anymore, you are told- are wary of you. You haven’t done anything to them, but you don’t like how indelicate they are with some of the geriatrics. When you see something you don’t like, you set your mouth into a firm line and stare at them until they do what you think they should be doing. 

There are no STNAs on your hall. There are psych techs. They mostly look at you every hour and make a note of where you are. The tech on second shift in your hall is an older black woman with sharp eyes and a nice smile. You went through a naked period. It wasn’t sexually motivated; it was more that you simply forgot to put on clothes. She would look at your pointedly and say in her mother-of-small-children tone of voice, put it away, Barnes. 

Eventually, they helped you make a list to remember to do things. You do everything in a specific order. It makes things easier and it calms you down. If you begin to get ahead of yourself, you go down the list. 

Third shift is the one you are partial to. You have a hard time sleeping. Even with the Seroquel and the Trazodone, you have a hard time shutting your eyes and keeping them closed. Some of the doors remain locked all night and you find yourself hypervigilant. Most of the staff at the facility are women and you worry. So you prowl the hallways, checking exits and empty rooms. 

They let you do this. 

Sometimes the third shift psychiatrist, who is also the owner of George the Bloodhound, sits in the community room and watches television. Sometimes she brings George and he sleeps in front of the couch with his big, wrinkled head on his massive paws. Sometimes you watch television with her and the nurse while you pet the dog.

You’ve become really invested in what goes on at the Jersey Shore. 

One night, the nurse tries to get you to eat one of those fake ice cream cups. You wrinkle your nose and tell her it tastes like shit. Then you tack on a ma’am because that’s how humans talk to other humans. 

The psychiatrist reaches out, takes the cup and takes a bite of the fake ice cream. She wrinkles her nose and throws the cup away. It does taste like shit, she says as she takes a crisp fifty dollar bill from her wallet and hands it to the psych tech. Go buy ice cream. Lots of ice cream. This is therapy, Sarge, she says, we’re going to figure out what flavor of ice cream you like. It’s part of discovering yourself. 

Form then on, you spend your nights watching crap television and exploring the taste of different things. 

For the record, your favorite flavor is called Capiscle by Ben and Jerry’s. 

You leave the facility. Eventually, you come back. When you do, you’re on the respite hall. That means the man named Steve Rogers is tired and that ache is once more lodged in your chest. It isn’t all bad. You discover lots of food you like and lots of food you don’t like.

You also get to pet George the Bloodhound. The third shift nurse comments on how much you like dogs and asks if you plan to get one. You tell her you have one. It’s a big, dopey golden retriever. When Steve comes to get you the next morning, you grin at her as she’s leaving and jerk your thumb in Steve’s direction. See, you say, retrieved. She looks at Steve and laughs. You surprise yourself by smiling. Steve just looks confused. And kind of dopey.


End file.
